


Her Doll's House

by reminiscence



Category: Et dukkehjem | A Doll's House - Henrik Ibsen
Genre: Freeverse, Gen, Poetry, ffn challenge: another mega prompts challenge, word count: under 1000 words
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-23
Updated: 2016-08-23
Packaged: 2018-08-10 14:26:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7848553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reminiscence/pseuds/reminiscence
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's a house full of dolls. It's a doll's house. And inside, she is the doll.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Her Doll's House

It's a house full of dolls. It's a doll's house.  
It's a place made of porcelain kindled carefully  
on a stove far unlike that one in the kitchen she can never touch  
(because they have a housekeeper, playing house, and she's a doll),  
or the fire in the hearth, that cackles merrily in winter but the cackles  
are just an echo of warmth and laughing children and memories.  
A doll's house has only those, only echoes that seep through  
the open roof and the dismantable walls, and even the furniture  
that a child can pick up and replace on a whim, but the housekeeper keeps straight  
and she, the doll, simply looks upon, the silent observer

Because if a doll has a voice, then hers was the tiny whisper  
no-one heard, because she had the ventriloquist speaking over her,  
writing the script, moving her lips with oh so gentle but also oh so cold  
hands upon dry skin: and they're not soft and pliable like a woman's lips  
because there's no spring in a doll's house, nor fresh breath of air  
and the food on her table is paper or plastic or rare porcelain  
like her body: brittle and breaking with things rattling inside

And if dolls can move, then she moves only in the dark nights where she can look up  
and it seems there really is a roof above her head, made of blank,  
and it's quiet everywhere, the puppeteer asleep, and  
whatever freedom the doll's house allows, she has, she uses  
but she can't climb the walls up to the roof even if there isn't really a roof  
and she can't open the door painted on, or the painted window frames  
and the doll's house is just as much a prison then, than her still waking hours.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Another Mega Prompts Challenge, writing prompts #6 - poem 200-300 words


End file.
